Rome to switch off lights of Colosseum at midnight for Gilad

On Thursday evening the lights of the Colosseum in Rome will be turned off in solidarity with kidnapped soldier Gilad Schalit. Noam Schalit, Gilad's father, will be in attendance along with the Roman citizens and the representatives of local and national Italian institutions.

According to organizers, the gathering is meant to send a message to the world: "Free Gilad now". Speeches will be given by Noam Schalit and the mayor of Rome, and pictures of Gilad will be screened. At 11 pm (midnight in Israel) the lights of the Colosseum will be turned off.

"We immediately launched the campaign for Shalit because we feel the burden of anxiety”, the President of the Jewish Community of Rome, Riccardo Pacifici, says.

Last summer Rome's Mayor Gianni Alemanno bestowed honorary citizenship on Gilad. The City of Rome has strongly supported the initiative in the Colosseum. Other cities in Italy have joined, and some of the municipalities will turn off the lights at some of their monuments.

"We want to sensitize public opinion and strongly assert our values, which belong to civil society as a whole, first of all the value of freedom. This event is first and foremost an expression of our strong support of the State of Israel,” Pacifici said.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Maze Cartoon of Tony Hayward fixing a leak on his boat. Maze cartoon of Tony Hayward, BP CEO, trying to stop a leak on his boat. Which he approaches the same way he did for the leak in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Created by Yonatan Frimer

VENICE, La. (AP) - Just when it seemed Gulf residents couldn't get any more outraged about the massive oil spill fouling their coastline, word came Saturday that BP's CEO was taking time off to attend a glitzy yacht race in England.

Tony Hayward's latest public relations gaffe didn't sit well with people in the U.S. who have seen their livelihoods ruined by the massive two-month oil spill.

"Man, that ain't right. None of us can even go out fishing, and he's at the yacht races," said Bobby Pitre, 33, who runs a tattoo shop in Larose, La. "I wish we could get a day off from the oil, too."

As social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook lit up with anger, BP spokespeople rushed to defend Hayward, who has drawn withering criticism as the public face of his company's halting efforts to stop the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

Robert Wine, a BP spokesman at the company's Houston headquarters, said it's the first break Hayward has had since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and setting off the undersea gusher.

"He's spending a few hours with his family at a weekend," Wine said Saturday. "I'm sure that everyone would understand that."

Not Mike Strohmeyer, who owns the Lighthouse Lodge in Venice, on Louisiana's southern tip, who said Hayward was "just numb."

"I don't think he has any feelings," he said. "If I was in his position.....

(RTTNews) - The European Union has slammed Iran with additional sanctions, the fourth punitive measure on the Islamic Republic within a week.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's continued defiance to international calls to wind up its nuclear enrichment program has already cost the country heavily, as the United Nations last week placed its fourth set of sanctions on Iran, while Australia imposed Tuesday new sanctions on an Iranian bank, a shipping company, as well as a man connected to a construction firm owned by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Wednesday, the United States added Iranian individuals and firms to a blacklist.

European leaders, who have gathered in Brussels Thursday for a summit, expressed their "deepening concerns about Iran's nuclear program."

More on this maze's topic:

The United Nations Security Council approved a new round of sanctions against Iran last week for its refusal to curb the country's nuclear program, which the U.S. and its allies suspect is aimed at producing weapons. Iran denies that.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran favors a dialogue with the West, but will announce its conditions soon. He said the carrot-and-stick approach doesn't work and Iran will not make "one iota of concessions" to the West.

"You showed bad temper, reneged on your promise and again resorted to devilish manners," he said of the powers that imposed sanctions. "We set conditions (for talks) so that, God willing, you'll be punished a bit and sit at the negotiating table like a polite child," he told a crowd during a visit to the central Iranian town of Shahr-e-Kord. His speech was broadcast live on state TV.

Monday, June 14, 2010

When I was in high school, I had to drive a long distance on a freeway to get to school. After arriving, I often wondered how I got there. I didn't remember the drive or even thinking about driving.

This feeling is a common (and, yes, somewhat scary) experience that a group of neuroscientists think they can better explain. In an experiment with rats, researchers at MIT identified two distinct neural circuits in the brain that show distinct changes when the rats were learning to navigate a maze and, later, after they mastered the task.

The rats were placed in a maze that had chocolate sprinkles at the end. The activity in specific parts of their brains was analyzed as they learned the maze, which included a T-juncture where they had to stop and choose to turn right or left. The rats performed the maze repeatedly until they had learned it.

The study showed that one specific neural circuit became stronger with practice. A second neural circuit showed high activity occurring at times when the rats had to make a decision in the maze. But as they learned the maze, activity in this circuit declined. The task had become habitual.

So, arriving at school in one piece wasn't just a matter of luck. "It is good to know that we can train our brains to develop good habits and avoid bad ones," the lead author of the study, Ann Graybiel, said in a news release.

Understanding how specific regions of the brain change through learning could help in developing new treatments for brain-based diseases. The study was published Thursday in the journal Neuron.

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U.N. imposes another round of sanctions on Iran

UNITED NATIONS -- After several months of grueling diplomacy, the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday imposed a fourth round of sanctions on Iran's military establishment -- a move that the United States and other major powers said should prompt the Islamic Republic to restart stalled political talks over the future of its nuclear program.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the foreign ministers of allied nations asked the European Union's chief diplomat to pursue talks with Iran at the "earliest possible opportunity," and President Obama asserted that "these sanctions do not close the door on diplomacy."

"We think that the sanctions send a kind of message to the entire Iranian leadership, which.... (Read Source Article)

Helen Thomas's controversial voice

I am appalled that Helen Thomas's comments on Israel prevent her from speaking at Walt Whitman High School's commencement ["Helen Thomas bows out of speech," Metro, June 7]. I am also disgusted that Ari Fleischer and Lanny Davis conducted a campaign to punish Ms. Thomas, no doubt as retribution for her outspoken questions when they served in earlier administrations. Freedom of speech, however, is lost to their petty maneuvering.

Most of us would not agree with Ms. Thomas's unfortunate and seemingly uninformed comments about where Jews might live in peace. But she has the right to say what she thinks, and listeners can decide whether she is foolish, biased and out of touch. Had she spoken at Whitman, perhaps she would have retracted, perhaps she would have lamented further . . . or maybe not.

Cartoon maze of how the Tea Party started. By Yonatan Frimer

Cartoon maze editorial of a bunch of sheep in a field. One sheep stands up and exclaims, "I will no longer be a follower!" The rest of the flock yells, "Me too!" and the group in the front explaim "If this catches on, we got to get that fox on board."

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Turkey's Erdogan bears responsibility in flotilla fiasco

WESTERN GOVERNMENTS have been right to be concerned about Israel's poor judgment and botched execution in the raid against the Free Gaza flotilla. But they ought to be at least as worried about the Turkish government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which since Monday has shown a sympathy toward Islamic militants and a penchant for grotesque demagoguery toward Israel that ought to be unacceptable for a member of NATO.

On the opposite page today, Turkey's ambassador to the United States makes the argument that Israel had no cause to clash with the "European lawmakers, journalists, business leaders and an 86-year-old Holocaust survivor" who were aboard the flotilla. But there...(read full article)

Cartoon maze of how the Tea Party started. By Yonatan Frimer

Cartoon maze editorial of a bunch of sheep in a field. One sheep stands up and exclaims, "I will no longer be a follower!" The rest of the flock yells, "Me too!" and the group in the front explaim "If this catches on, we got to get that fox on board."

Good year to be a Cameron, cartoon maze:Cartoon maze editorial both David Cameron, the new prime minister of England and of James Cameron, who produced and directed Avatar, a movie that has broken many records for generating the most revenue. 2010 sure is a good year if your last name is Cameron.

Editorial maze cartoon of a conversation between King Fahd and Jean-Marie Lustiger on having a grand mosque built in Paris. Lustiger replies, "Sure, just as soon as I can build a grand cathedral in Mecca."

Can't solve the maze? Click here for the maze solutionEditorial Cartoon Maze of Bashar Assad, President Ahmadinejad, and Hassan Nasrallah on the road to dictatorship. A donkey marked UN poops out resolution as the Iranian president remarks "Just don't step in any of it till we get there."